A Blythe Coach

Tag: Performance

Humor and Wisdom from the Multi-Passionate Dancing Life of Matthew Donnell

A delightful conversation with fellow dance educator and UNCSA alumnus as well as super-talented and wonderful guy, Matthew Donnell! We talk about the highs and lows of being a multi-passionate jack-of-all-trades, his highlights as a professional ballet dancer, how to fall down and get back up again, the importance of révérence, character dance, and technique variety in ballet training, developing character in dancers and human beings, serving our communities, helping dancers find their voice, and assert that all people are valuable!

Dancing Body Acceptance with Dietician Fumi Somehara

Part 1 of my mini-series on Dancing Body Acceptance! I had the great pleasure, during my personal “Body-Positive October” celebration research, to talk with Dietician Fumi Sumehara, who is based in Australia. Fumi took time out of her busy day at the DDD Clinic to talk with me about diet culture in ballet and society and ways to promote nourishment and a healthy relationship with eating and body image as dancers, teachers, companies and schools, and others.

Seven Satisfying Connecting Steps in Ballet Technique

Here’s a healthy half-dozen ballet connecting steps to practice as you develop your dancing over the years, so many fun ways to get from one place to another!

Learning from Mistakes & Failure

“Do not fear mistakes–there are none.” – Miles Davis

The research-based book on learning, Make it Stick, blew my mind a bit during my teacher credential program, especially finding out that the difficulty of recalling new information correctly correlates to the depth of the learning. That means the more I struggle to remember German words, as long as I try hard, keep practicing, and get corrections when I can, the more permanent and retrievable that information will be in the future.

Struggle and failure are inherent to learning, creativity, and dancing, so we would do well to learn to approach them with compassion.

Shapeshifting Dancers: Forms & How We Get There

What do a carpenter swinging a hammer, an office worker closing a drawer, a police officer directing traffic, and a ballerina’s storytelling have in common? All of their movements are traveling through space in relationship to other objects (concrete or abstract), taking specific pathways with particular attitudes. The hammer arcs up and then down to […]

Podcast #50: Interview with Mentor Virginia Holte, bringing ballet to the Big Island of Hawaii

For nearly a year, the A Blythe Coach podcast has consisted of weekly bite-sized insights on dance, yoga, well-being, creativity, and joy! But, to celebrate the 50th episode of my podcast, I’ve decided to share a special longer-form (1-hour) interview, kicking off a regular interview series to be interspersed with my solo episodes. I’m so […]

Developing Rhythm & Musicality for Dance

In her introduction to the book Hip Hop Speaks to Children: a celebration of poetry with a beat*, Nikki Giovanni explains the genesis of rhythm in language, music, and ultimately hip hop: “When humans were beginning to develop our own language, separate from the growls and howls, separate from the buzz and the birdsongs, we […]

Goal-Setting for Dancers

Having worked with hundreds of high school, college, adult and graduate students in ballet and modern dance classes, I have learned to balance the stated objectives of the dance course with the expectations and personal goals of the individual students.  We all come to dance (or whatever artistic practices we pursue) for diverse reasons, and […]

Stand, Objectives, & Projects for 2021

In this blog, I’m sharing my theme for 2021 and the goals and projects I’ll tackle in the coming year! This will be my final blog of 2020, and I’ll pick up in January with goal-setting and achievement for dancers, yoga and dance techniques, and more. Please let me know what topics you’d most like […]

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